Getting muddy and making new buddies

Today I found an app that will allow me to update my blog from my iPad which is going to make things very easy for me. I find that I am rarely on my computer anymore and that I mostly take pictures with my iPod touch or my iPad so hopefully this app will help me keep our blog current while we are on the go.


Last weekend, Bobby and I attended the annual mud festival in Boryeong, South Korea. This event brings around 2 million people every year to visit a beautiful beach and get covered in mud. We learned about this event last year while we were still living in the states and knew this was something we had to experience.


Before the trip, we found ourselves getting somewhat lonely at times. Yes, Bobby and I had each other and this made things much easier, but we were used to seeing friends and family everyday. We missed having conversations with people and socializing. We learned very quickly it was hard to have real conversations with Koreans because you have to talk in very broken english and very slowly.
Back to the mud festival... we were very excited to go on this group consisting of 60-70 foreigners and one Korean man (Charles) who organizes many events for foreigners.
Immediately while waiting for our bus to come on a warm but rainy Friday night at 12:30am we met a couple (Julia and Cliff from the Philadelphia area who were teaching an hour from Busan on a small island. Julia is a beautiful girl who is half korean and half german. She was funny and outgoing. Her boyfriend was a dark haired man who looked italian (but i don't think thats the case because of his thick Philly accent). He was quiet, but would do anything to make Julia happy. They were a good couple.
We waited for the bus with them for 1.5 hours. Conversation never lulled...but that might have something to do with the beers we were drinking while we waited. At about 1:30am we were informed by Charles that the busses we were suppose to take got into an accident and we couldn't leave until 8am. So we found our way home and got a couple hours of sleep (which made it even harder to wake up) and we made our way back to the bus station...
So here we are in Boreyoung at the mud festival on Saturday. We grabbed many bottles of soju (which tastes like a watered down vodka) and energy drinks, we find some Korean friends of ours who met us there from seoul and we started to cover each other and anyone in arms reach with mud. It was so much fun. All you could hear was laughter and girls screaming as they flirted with the guys who rubbed mud on their faces. After we got muddy we went into a family mart (which are on every corner) to get more soju and energy drinks (we were running on a few hours of sleep) Then made our way to the beach to drink and wash off in the warm/salty ocean.














We had a great time at the beach and met some people from London who taught here.
Then we made our way back to the pension(kind of like a big house made into small rooms with no beds.) showered and went out to dinner with some new people we met who were staying in our room. They were these two beautiful lesbian women who were very fun to hang out with and down to earth. The food and conversation was excellent.
We found ourselves back at the pension where we met even more foreigners and played drinking games and talked till very late in the night. I later found out the mosquitoes in the country area are extremely mean. So this is how I looked the next day:




Yuck.
At this point in our adventure it is Sunday morning. We wake up when this guy in our room gets up and walks out. We find out his name is Erick and he doesn't remember going to sleep the night before. He walks with us to the family mart to get some coffee. He had such an interesting personality that you couldn't help but talk with him all day... which is what we ended up doing.
We were on a mission the first half of the day to find Internet and Skype Bobby's Dad for his 60th birthday. While were waiting for Kyoko and Woody to be available to Skype, we were soaked up Ericks positive personality and got to hear all about his recent travels and how he ended up getting to mud festival.
To make a long story somewhat shorter, we hung out with him and met up with the girl he was visiting, Pascale, who is a slender beautiful blonde girl. Even though she lost everything she owned two nights prior, she was very easy going.
We had lunch with Charles and a few other foreigners at this place where they brought us tons of shell fish and we cooked them on a stove at our table and when they cracked open they were ready to eat.








Shortly after lunch Charles announced that the bus would be leaving in ten min.
We never saw Charles again...at least not yet.
We have no idea what happened to Charles. Every person who came on this trip paid him70,000 won which is about $65 for the pension and bus. Turns out Charles told the pension owners and the bus drivers that non of us had paid him and we were going to that night.
After five stressful hours involving the police and the yelling Korean pension owners, every foreigner paid an extra $27 and the bus was able to take us home.
It has been five days and Charles has still not been found. He is wanted by the police for fraud against foreigners.
This is crazy to us and we are so very curious as to what happened. It blows my mind that we were having lunch with him a half hour before he went missing. I guess there were many people on this trip who thought of Charles as a friend who is very kind to foreigners and they didn't think he stole our money...but it sure seems like he did to everyone else. The best scammers are always personable.
All we really lost was $27 and a few hours, but we also made many new friends who will be here during our adventures in Busan. We are very happy for the whole experience despite the hiccup.
Staying positive.
So that was last weekend...
When we know more on the missing Charles story we will update all of you. Also more to come about teaching and life in Korea.
Xoxox

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Location:Corem language institute.

A very busy first week in the land of the morning calm

Well here we are... about to start our second week here in Busan. Before I talk about what will happen next week, let me back up and tell you about our adventure so far.

Our flight from Seattle to Seoul was delayed by an hour and this worried us because we already only had 2.5 hours to get our luggage, go through customs, find a bus to take us to another airport about a half hour away and then re-check our luggage and find our terminal.  Well CRAP.. the flight was already going to be an hour late. But we just said "oh well, everything will work out and it will be a part of the experience!"

The flight to Seoul was on Asiana Air and it was GREAT! They served lots of great food and beer and wine every few hours. The flight attendants were beautiful and very kind. We both slept well and Bobby even got to play some street fighter 2! When we arrived in Seoul we were well rested, our bellies were full, and we were on to our next mission: to get to the other airport.

Of course our bags were the last ones off of the plane and the line to get through customs was huge... but we found a bus right away and were on our way to Gimbo Airport in Seoul. We found where asaina air was at the airport and we were five minuets to late to board =(. We decided after a while that we would get a hotel room nearby and catch the first flight to Busan in the morning. We ended up staying at the Amigo Motel that is close to the airport...we quickly found out this was one of the many "LOVE HOTELS" in Korea that you can rent by the hour...they even gave us condoms when we checked in. Once again, we took this is as being all about the experience of moving to Korea.

Monday June 25th around 9am we landed in BUSAN! The sun was shinning and we were lost in the airport with 240 lbs of luggage. Finally we found two Koreans (whom we work for) that were there to pick us up. There was a long line of taxi's outside, we chose one and were on our to our apartment to drop off our luggage, then lunch, then to the school to meet our coworkers and students. When we got to our apartment there was nothing in it and we quickly found out we had to stay here with nothing until the people whom we were replacing left in a week. They gave us a bowl, a cup and a blanket to tide us over until the other couple left (we are still sleeping on the ground).

I was very impressed with the school. It is very well-kept and the kids are the cutest things I've ever seen. Bobby quickly became Robert Teacher, which then quickly became ROBOT TEACHER!! They are still calling him that. Luckily, I am simply Jestine Teacher.

Since our first day, we have been observing classes and soaking up as much information as we can during the day. At night, we have been seeing some of what Busan has to offer: awesome food, a brilliant public transit system, cheap Korean drinks (subpar beer, Soju which is more or less like a watered down vodka, and macaulay a carbonated milky alcoholic beverage), and most important of all the unparalleled friendliness of pretty much everyone we have encountered. On our days off we have been able to explore and discover our surroundings, travel the short distance to Haeundae beach, and sleep off our insanely late nights.

Nothing is perfect, but we feel pretty damn lucky for how smooth, fun, and eye-opening our transition has been these last few days.










Coming soon, we will post some of the things find amusing here, as well as pictures of the school and the children and a video of our finished apartment.

건배!
CHEERS.
J&B